Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Funny! Pot Calls Kettle Black

Here's an interesting bit from a feature article in GQ magazine by Matt Latimer who worked as one of George Bush’s speechwriters during the president’s final twenty-two months in office. This is from Latimer's book Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor:
The president, like me, didn’t seem to be in love with any of the available options. He always believed Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. “Wait till her fat keister is sitting at this desk,” he once said (except he didn’t say “keister”). He didn’t think much of Barack Obama. After one of Obama’s blistering speeches against the administration, the president had a very human reaction: He was ticked off. He came in one day to rehearse a speech, fuming. “This is a dangerous world,” he said for no apparent reason, “and this cat isn’t remotely qualified to handle it. This guy has no clue, I promise you.” He wound himself up even more. “You think I wasn’t qualified?” he said to no one in particular. “I was qualified.”
I think this is hysterically funny. Obama is infinitely qualified compared to the bored C- average spoiled prep school flunky George Bush. Sure GWB was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and got to watch politics up close as his father was President. But Bush is an idiot and learned no useful lessons. Obama doesn't have the background, but he is a quick learner and far, far more intelligent. So this is one unprepared President calling another "unprepared". Funny!

If you want to get a real insider look into the Bush administration, read this article. Here's another example:
“This is the last bullet we have,” the president said at one point, referring to the bailout. “If this doesn’t work…” He shook his head, and his voice trailed off. That wasn’t good enough for me. If this doesn’t work, then what? We’re done? America is over? I looked around at everyone else. What does that mean?

Ed and the president decided to give a prime-time address to the nation, and Vice President Cheney was sent to the Hill to argue for our bill (a bill he may or may not have believed in) and was apparently hammered by House Republicans. There were reports that only four Republicans out of nearly 200 supported the plan. From what I was starting to glean about the whole scatterbrained operation, four seemed like too many. Hours before the president was to speak to the country, Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign informed Josh Bolten that McCain was going to phone the president and urge him to call off the address and instead hold an emergency economic summit in Washington. If the president did speak that night, the McCain campaign didn’t want him to outline any specific proposal.

Of course, this threw the proverbial monkey wrench into our plans—and at the eleventh hour. I overheard the president call McCain’s plan “a stunt.” Dana Perino said the negotiations were nearly over, and suddenly he was going to swoop in and muck things up? The president’s political adviser, Barry Jackson, was blunt, calling McCain a “stupid prick.”

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